The Mavericks
9/20/16
Fremont Theater
San Luis Obispo, CA

Neumann AK 40s (ORTF In Hat) >LC3 >KM 100s >Beyer MV-100 (20db Gain) >Tascam DR100mkII (24bit/48khz)

Front Row, DEAD Center (5ft In Front Of Raul Malo).

WAV >Sound Forge Pro 11.0 Build 299 (Waves L1+ Ultramaximizer Stereo plugin) >Audacity (Track Splits, Minor Edits, Down Sample / Dither To 16bit/44.1khz) >FLAC (Level 8) + Tags Via xACT 2.37

Recorded, Audacity, FLAC And Tags By OldNeumanntapr
Sound Forge Pro Post Production By Dennis Orr

16 BIT FILES

01. Announcements, By Bruce Howard Of Otter Productions
02. Prologue >
03. Back In Your Arms Again
04. I Got You
05. All Night Long
06. All Over Again
07. Stories We Could Tell
08. All That Heaven Will Allow
09. There Goes My Heart
10. Dance The Night Away
11. Blue Bayou
12. Loving You
13. From Hell To Paradise
14. As Long As There’s Loving Tonight
15. Encore Break
16. Us And Them*
17. Harvest Moon**
18. Born On The Bayou***
19. Brown Sugar****
20. Dance In The Moonlight
21. What A Crying Shame
22. Come Unto Me

Raul Malo: Lead Vocals, Electric + Acoustic Guitars, & Percussion
Paul Deakin: Drums, Percussion & Marimba
Eddie Perez: Electric + Acoustic Guitars
Jerry Dale McFadden: Piano, Organ & Celeste
Max Abrams: Saxophone
Unknown: Trumpet
Unknown: Stand Up Bass
Unknown: Accordion

Drive In Romeos Opened

*Pink Floyd Cover
**Neil Young Cover
***Creedence Clearwater Revival Cover
****Rolling Stones Cover


OldNeumanntapr Notes-
This is a band that I wasn’t familiar with, though I have heard the music of Raul Malo on KPIG FM. I just didn’t know that he fronted The Mavericks. I got a free ticket at the last minute from my friend Dave but the block that he got from the promoter was all in the front row. My seat was in Row A, DEAD Center, directly in front of Raul. I wasn't really happy with the placement but it was a near sold out house so there was really nothing I could do about it. As it turned out it didn't sound half bad. The vocals sounded a bit 'hollow' because I was under the main PA stacks. But, what I lost from the vocals I gained in proximity to the stage and lack of obnoxious crowd. (The obnoxious people were behind me, instead of in front.) My neck has a crick in it from looking up for almost two hours. I tried to raise the capsules as much as I could, but there was a stupid woman behind me that stood to dance the whole show and periodically hit me in the head with her flailing arms. So, I had to be careful how far back I leaned. The guitars had on-stage amps which were really clear (I was able to aim the microphones directly between Raul’s two angled wedge vocal monitors to catch the sound coming off of his two Fender amps), and I could clearly hear both the trumpet player and the sax player on stage. The keyboards seemed to be run through a DI because it seemed that I remember only hearing them though the mains. The band sounded really good onstage.

Someone upset Raul at the end of ‘As Long As There’s Loving Tonight’ (before the encore break) and he got pissed and threw his water bottle at them. I didn't see exactly what happened because I had my eyes closed a bit, trying to listen to see if I could differentiate the various instruments in the mix, and because the little rotating lights on stage kept momentarily blinding me. The person in question was to my left, either in the front row or the one directly behind. Raul stormed off stage at the end of the song after yelling ‘Get the F out of here’ to the person, and the rest of the band followed him. I wasn’t sure if they were coming back after a couple of minutes, but they returned to the stage and played at least another 50 minutes including a lot of cover songs.

Because I was in the front row I couldn’t monitor my recorder at all without being seen, so I set levels during the opening band. My levels on The Mavericks set were a lot hotter than I had expected, because the headliner was a lot louder than the opening band. (My friend Abe commented that he felt that the sound was twice as loud as it needed to be.) It was pretty loud, but again, I was so close to the stage that the majority of my sound was coming from the musicians themselves. I was off axis to the PA stacks but could still hear them pretty well. All of the vocals were coming off of the PA. The only flaw, and it’s a minor one, of this recording is that the vocals are not as clear and well defined as I would have liked but they are acceptable. I was worried during the show that I was going to over drive the Beyerdynamics preamp into clipping, because it has a tendency to distort if the sound is really loud, especially if the -10db pads are not used on the microphone bodies. I’ve been recording a lot lately with the Lunatec V2 preamp, which is a lot more adjustable so I haven’t been engaging the pads, but the V2 is a lot bigger and would have been impossible to hide in this setting. I checked the pack a couple of times to see if I could tell if the overload LEDs were lit, and they were glowing at the peaks, but I have read that the clipping lights on the Beyer flash red at 7db BEFORE clipping occurs.

Thanks to Dave for the ticket, and thanks to Dennis for the post production help. I am only a link in a chain and these recordings would not be possible without the help of others. I hope everyone enjoys this one, because it was a really good show. Raul introduced only the keyboard player and the sax player. The photo, along with the known band member names, I pulled off of their websites.

The Historic Fremont (Movie Theater) Was Built In 1942


Do NOT Convert To MP3.
Enjoy! Share freely, don’t sell, play nice, don’t run with scissors, etc. ;)



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